The dazzling glory of San Francisco’s 25,000 LEDs—now on video

Ars shoots a flick of (and adds music to) pretty public art on the Bay Bridge.

As we reported earlier this week (both in written and pictorial form), a prominent section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been transformed into a massive public art project called the Bay Lights.

Each night for the next two years, from dusk until 2am, the northern side of the bridge section between San Francisco and neighboring Treasure Island will display a dazzling array of 25,000 LEDs. It's an assortment of animated patterns, strung vertically on the bridge’s twisted steel cables.

Each LED is individually addressable over an Ethernet, copper wire, and fiber optic network strung out onto the bridge for this purpose, filtered by 528 custom versions of Philips power and data supply boxes.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video must be worth a lot more.

Here's about two-and-a-half minutes of the Bay Lights, set to the beats of DJ Sabzi.

Hmmm. After the 2 years is up, Clear Channel Outdoor can buy the lights and gear, and turn it into a giant billboard will scrolling text advertising Skippy Peanut Butter, Cialis, Depends, and giving the time and temp.

I was expecting something a lot better. The Eiffel Tower's lights in 2009 when I visited Paris were a lot more interesting to watch, and that was three years ago. The Empire State Building's new LED lights also seem a lot more interesting than this.

Disappointed. I understand this is a small clip relative to the different things it does, but even so, there's still a good 2 1/2 minutes of abstract patterns that lose whatever marginal interest they held after about 10 seconds.

I wanted to see geometric patterns, ripple effects from one end of the bridge to the other, moving shapes "bouncing" off the main cables and bridge deck, giant Pac-man... generalizing, I suppose I wanted to see shapes and patterns that I could recognize, that made some kind of sense to my puny human brain.

On the other hand, I admit I'd rather watch giant uninteresting abstract patterns than giant ads, so +1 for that.

I'd like to know the total expected cost of running these lights on one side of the bridge for two years from dusk until 2am taking seasonal variances in what counts as "dusk" into account.

Not harping. Just curious.

This is something I think would be hella sweet for Cincinnati to do with the replacement of the Brand Spence bridge should we actually grow the balls to spend the money to replace it... given it traffics tens of billions of dollars worth of commercial traffic every year.

Nice, but no color? Monochrome gets boring quickly. Color would have given the artist a lot more freedom of expression.

Actually, monochrome is one of the most consistently beautiful stylizations around. While color preferences change from season to season and year to year monochrome has always been a reliable favorite.

I'd like to know the total expected cost of running these lights on one side of the bridge for two years from dusk until 2am taking seasonal variances in what counts as "dusk" into account.

Not harping. Just curious.

This was discussed in the comment thread on one of the earlier articles. The total electric bill is only about $15k total for the two years (and as was pointed out, you can pay for it with the toll fee from four cars a day). Pocket change! LEDs are awesome that way.